Surviving Hummus

My family is trying to kill me… one healthy meal at a time.

I’ve got a daughter who has become uber-healthy. While I respect her dedication and discipline, I have a problem with it creeping onto my plate. My notion of healthy living is running more so that I can eat whatever crap I want.

My parade toward death started innocently enough. With granola. That’s how they get you, right? They offer you something you like – almonds, oats, nuts, honey, and just enough sweet bits to tie it all together into a happy, delicious treat. Then slowly it morphs. It becomes good for you. Gone are the sweet bits; replaced with freeze-dried fruits that are a shell of themselves because they’ve had their natural sweetness squeezed out of them. All that’s left is the crusty husk… like me.

Still I eat it. I eat it because things that were the source of life: nachos, Oreos, M & M’s, and pre-wrapped synthetic goodness seem to have been removed from our pantry. I miss my sweet and salty friends. They were the sustenance of my youth. I weep for them.

The desolation that our refrigerator has become is truly abhorrent. I barely have the resolve to open its air-tight door and hear the floooth of disappointment. My heart sinks with the sound of the broken seal.

Where is the cheese?

Green, green, green. Was man truly meant to eat green with every meal? I don’t mind the occasional salad, but unless you dress it up, green things are completely subpar on the taste side. The only thing particularly manly that comes from green veggies is the resultant gas. Lettuce and broccoli are like jet fuel but when the plane starts bouncing down the runway, we get in trouble. It’s not fair. Nature is nature, you feed a man a leaf and you have to be ready for the leaf to be turned over… and over… and over.

By far the biggest problem in the fridge is hummus. What the heck is hummus? I’ve never seen a chickpea; it has the consistency of paste and no taste – why would we consider it a food source? Hummus has more relevance as mortar than food. If you can erect a cinder block wall with it, please don’t serve it to me! I don’t care what flavor they add to it, when I crack the lid all I can see is the poop emoji staring up at me.

We also seem to be dabbling in the latest craze to assault the American male: quinoa. I can’t even say it, why would I eat it? I thought it was just some made up crap given to us by the flower children who pushed smoothies on us a few years ago. Since I had no idea what this quinoa was, I did some research and found quinoa comes to us from South America. May I remind you that the last mass produced crop the South Americans exported to us was from the coca plant and now we have an entire government agency trying to push that back over the border. Shouldn’t that serve as a lesson?

If there is a point here, it is that a man was meant to live on grease, pizza, and red meat – not beans and sprouts. I know there are some who have chosen a green path and while I don’t understand their earthy, crunchiness, I can look the other way. Most real mean can’t be pulled into vegetableness. It is simply unnatural! I have survived hummus thus far, but I fear the quinoa might be the tipping point.

God gave all his chillens taste buds for a reason.

I just want a little corner of the fridge and one shelf in the pantry reserved for stuff that will clog my arteries. Is that too much to ask?

Oh Mark, I am in your corner 100%! I have a vegan daughter who is old enough to leave this mom alone. I think she created the slogan “yet she persists”! On a recent visit to Austin ….you know…. the state of beef and bar-b-que, she asked us to pick up a pan if we were going to cook meat. No sullying her precious cast iron!!

Looking forward to her next visit…. when I ask her to go get a pan for her vegan goodness! BTW… just ate the last 2 Samoas the girl scouts eagerly sell!

hahaha!!!! I loved this, I am the terrible eater in my family, my hubby and daughters love hummus… to me, it is like fungus, fungus among us… I buy hummus for them. I have quinoa in my pantry. But, i drive to the store to get groceries and it is a long enough trip for me to quietly enjoy my bag of chips or my candy bar or anything else unhealthy that pops into my cart. After all, I did not throw a fit in the store, so I deserve a treat… Cathi

I have IBS, Mark, so you can only imagine the new diets I have to (sometimes) stick to.
We’ll have to get together someday for a “real meal”, one that will endanger both our lives, as God intended man to eat.